


A Heart For A Heart

by Merkey666



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Eventual Smut, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Murder, happy ending not guaranteed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-28 23:42:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8467606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkey666/pseuds/Merkey666
Summary: Gerard is having trouble getting the hand go being a detective. He's lonely and scared, and Frank isn't really helping. Especially now that he's the number one suspect in Gerard's case.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I got the idea for this trash bag while watching NCIS- essentially, no promises. If you like it or have any ideas, please let me know!

I’m not going to be daft- I know exactly how it happened. I know every step of the way by heart, quite literally. I memorized it because my brain is the only representation that could get it down just the way I felt it. It’s the story that cut my life up. Do I regret it? Not really.

The world is a tricky place. It doesn’t bend and curl to a person’s every whim, for, if it did, it wouldn’t really be just one world, would it? No, it would be one universe in a vast sea of other universes. A sea with every drop of water not being a person, but a galaxy, an infinity of people, and lives, and to that extent- whims. That is why we do not get what we always want, but it’s also what enables us to see the bright side of things. Those close to me now say that I see the bright side too often these days, but I feel that’s only fair if you understand there’s less brightness to see. That, and my lifetime of handing others bright sides, silver linings, and ultimatums. It’s funny how I ended up on the other side of that, the very side I spent my precious time pitying. 

Speaking of precious time, I’ve got the rest of my life to spend telling stories, but I’m never going to get anyone to tell them to. The wall, absent of color, fades. The grey light streaming through the tightly shut window fades. Everything fades. No noise, no sight, no time.

**April 9, 2011**

My phone buzzed in my pocket, a signal I could leave my bitter desk, and my bitter coworkers, and my bitter computer. My satchel awaited me by the side of my desk, looking at me like an expectant puppy. I switches off my computer, of which I hated so relentlessly. I’d be damned if I ever figured out how to use it. 

The warped leather of my satchel had barely touched the shoulder of my raincoat, before there was a knock on my wall. I stood a little taller and peeked over the edge of my half height cubicle wall.

“D’you have plans tonight?” the man asked, turning up the collar of his own dismal raincoat. “Cause I don’t want you to spend another birthday sitting at home and reading some trashy magazine.”

“I do not read trashy magazines! The coffee lady’s been putting ideas in your head again, Ray,” I scoffed, trying not to let myself wonder just what Jennifer Aniston was doing right at that very moment. 

“She’s not putting ideas in my head if they’re true.” 

I laughed and kicked my chair in closer to my desk. I didn’t want anymore critters making a life for themselves down there. The shadows from my light snapped into instant darkness with the flip of my lamp on/off switch. Ray straightened up and walked me towards the elevator. The lime green walls kissed me and the agency goodnight as the orange light of the elevator button went out. Ray sighed, blocking out the beep of the elevator. 

“No, but seriously. I’ll take you out for a drink, if you want. Hell, I’ll even pay.” Ray really was too sweet to me. I tried not to gush over his kindness as I thought over the proposition. 

“As much as I appreciate the sentiment of you paying for my drink and spending quality time with me outside of the office on my birthday, I really can’t. I promised my brother and his fancy new fiancee I’d celebrate with them,” I sighed, as the floors passed us down, one by one. 

Ray chuckled. “Always that damn brother, getting in my way. Ah well,” he paused. “As long as you have a good time to make up for coming in early on a Saturday.” I smiled, clutching my bag tightly as the elevator groaned to a halt. 

It had been an early morning, and an even longer day, notwithstanding the amounts of coffee I consumed, which would’ve made my doctors’ blood boil. I guessed that’s where Ray got his info on the indeed very trashy magazines I had delivered to my desk. There was to be no more of that, going forward.

Ray yawned, leading me out of the elevator and into the alarmingly bright parking lot. A dust whirl, infused with trash barreled past me. I absentmindedly followed Ray back to his car, who caught me halfway with a sad look. 

“Look man, get some rest. I’ll see you just as early Monday morning, unless you change your mind about a beer. I’m still happy to oblige…” Ray encouraged. I shook my head, smiling sadly. 

“I really wish I could. But this new fiancee has really been digging a moat around al my fun. See you Monday, Ray, and thanks for the metaphorical drink.” I waved and walked down the concrete slope, humming a slow, sad tune I’d heard on the way to work that morning. 

~

The music on the way to my brother’s new castle sounded no more than a blender of overused emotions and overworked media puppets. It felt able, down to the very paint of my car. Down to the very shade of my brother’s new house in the “urbs” part of suburbs. Right down to the very plants, sticking out onto the pavement, caged by their white picket fence.

A knock, a one manned welcome, and a drink in my hand later, I’m seated on their couch, watching the fire in the hearth. 

“I see you’ve had no troubles settling into the simple life,” I laughed, taking a sip of the amber concoction clasped between my cold fingers. 

“And you’re still in the spot light.” Mikey looked up at me through his glasses, which looked… cleaned. He sat forward in his black-and-white-film-esque leather chair across from me, taking myself in. I probably looked a mess from his position. I wasn’t, really.

“Nah… Not really. I was trying really hard for a while there. But things cooled down, you included.”

“This isn’t about me,” he pressed, staring me down wit those big, brown eyes of his. Ah I see, I thought. It was about him trying to get through to me. Trying to get me out of the spot light, and drag someone into the shadows with me. The same shadows he was now living under, with his bride to be.

“Where’s Kristin?” I asked, feigning interest in a girl I knew wasn’t to fond of me. To be fair, I had tried to get Mikey to dump her for an old flame who reappeared a few years ago, but that was old news, even then.

“She went to get some… something.”

“Some something?”

“Look Gerard, you’re really not making this easy. You- shit. I’ve had a long day, I apologize. I hear you’ve had a long day too. Work improving?” he asked, referencing his phone call early that morning that I was forced to abort when Ray had another miraculous discovery that led nowhere. 

“Mm. Well, it’s something. Odd, really. It feels like the mob, but none of the suspects had any ties to the mob,” I replied.

“Had?”

“Yeah, had. They’re all dead now.” The front door clicked open. My fingers fiddled with the trigger of the gun on my hip I didn’t even bother to pull out. My reflexes were improving on some scale. 

“I hope I’m not interrupting!” Rising smiled, dropping her keys onto the table next to the door. She held a bouquet of assorted wild flowers, that was so very large, her small hands barely fit around the stalks of the harvest. She slid her purse off her shoulder and onto the floor, shoving it into the nearest corner with her foot. 

“I got these for you. Happy birthday.” She smiled warmly, but not nearly as warmly as Mikey. Some may have said that that was just the way families worked, but she was to be part of the family. And her smile was borderline lukewarm.

I gave her a quick squeeze and a smile back and left the bushel of flowers on my lap.

“I don’t mean to change the subject all of the sudden, but I made some food and maybe a lighter subject would be more appropriate?” she chose her words carefully. 

It occurs to me now, that she really was afraid. Fitting in with me and Mikey wasn’t an easy task. Not easier said or done. Few had tried. It’s not eve worth saying that no one had succeeded, because it was less than that. No one left in one piece. I’ve seen hearts come and go, all beaten and mutilated just like the people down in the morgue I spent so much of my time talking to. It wasn’t only us that was scary for her, no, it was me. Just me and my ghosts, in all their glorious shapes and sizes. There were my past lovers per say, there was my job, my qualifications. Multiple degrees in psychology, law, forensics, some science for shits and giggles. I spent so much time in school preparing for th real world, that I became my own safe house. I never needed the books cause I was one. That’s why I was in the spotlight, and never directing. Like most people, Kristin feared those who didn’t act like an empathetic person- a person who acts like a walking bout of truth. But there I was, nonetheless. 

Dinner was fun. As much fun as a man who spent days and nights getting inside heads, both metaphorically and physically. The cake was a plus as well.

Mikey walked me to the door, pressing the bouquet into my thick hands, gently. 

“Happy birthday, Gee.”

“Thank you.”

“But Gee- don’t learn the tricks of the trade. Make your own. Otherwise most people other than Kristin will not take to you as well as I do.” I brushed it off.

“She’s only afraid because I can-“ But Mikey sent me a death defying look and pushed the flowers into my hands. He knew I was falling behind. And suddenly, I knew it too.

**August 1, 2011**

I stepped my fucking game up. I slam dunked my rule book from the agency into the trash the Monday after my birthday. I clearly pushes against authority, gained where I could. Ray and I were unstoppable. Although, Ray was convinced it was my lack of reading those magazine that made me wake the fuck up, and maybe it was. Because I stopped staring the spotlight dead in its bone shaking face, and started pointing it at others.

There was a waft of something foul when I walked into work that morning. Ray winced at me, a clothespin over his nose.

“Ger mernern,” he garbled from under the clothespin. I smiled and took a deep refreshing breath. A corpse.

“If you couldn’t tell, Bob’s got something for you in the morgue,” Ray grumbled some more.

“It’s autopsy, not the morgue,” I reminded him.

“Whatever, Sherlock.”

“I thought we agreed you were Sherlock?” I wondered aloud. A paper ball his the back of my head.

“Will you just go? Bob won’t shut his doors until he’s trapped you inside,” Ray pleaded.

“Can’t wait!” I chuckled sarcastically, throwing the paper back at him. I dropped my satchel on my chair, and strolled right back to the elevator. 

I can’t genuinely say that I was happier just because I was back where I wanted to be. I think I was just happy to be busy. And I thought at the time I was happy to be busy and alone, but that was wrong. I was happy to be busy, but I was not happy being lonely.

“Bob, what wonderful smell have you cooked up for me today?” I asked, tearing up a little at the awful sensation that truly was so much worse down there.

“Welcome, Gerard. Today I’ve got pan roasted liver, with a side of frozen stomach acid,” he replied, jumping to his feet. He smiled as he lifted his face mask over his eyes and yanked on his gloves. Many people worried that Bob loved his job just a little to much. Others worried he might be the next on the wall- The FBI’s most wanted wall. The one that was just a few paces away from my desk.

“Do you know? Well, how can that be? I thought this was just a stabbing,” I thought aloud. Bob greedily listed the liver out of the body and held it up to my eye level. It had black scotch marks on the outer lining, surrounding a puncture wound about the size of a pool stick. He set the liver down and handed me the jar of frozen stomach acid, but not until I’d pulled on gloves of my own.The jar was very cold indeed, but it was nothing compared to the stomach that had crystals forming in between the outer muscle layers. 

“Cool, huh?” Bob murmured. I sent him a glare.

“Murder is never cool. Not until the victim is avenged. And then, only then, the method is interesting and unusual. Not the agony of the loss or the grief of the family.” I spoke clearly, letting my words hit him with the full effect. He nodded and put the stomach down. 

“So what’s the sitch, doc?” he asked.

“I haven’t the slightest…” I mumbled, setting the container back on the table. Head spinning, I walked out.

“Oh, and Bob?” He turned and looked at me whole heartedly.

“Get some fucking Febreze.”

~

Ray had less of a clue than I did, being that he refused to see the body first hand, as the smell of burned flesh was apparently too much for him. 

I remember the song playing on the radio that night as I drove home in my blue sedan. It was an angry song, but not vengeful. Angry in a way that makes you feel ready and capable, but not overpowered. And boy, I sure needed it.


End file.
